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Sumi Cho, DePaul University College of Law

  • When: May 23, 2012, 12 pm
  • Where: Woods Conference Room, 750 N. Lake Shore Dr., 4th Floor, Chicago, IL 60611

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Sumi Cho

Professor of Law

                                                          "The Moral Economy of Post-racialism"

Orienting Questions:

1)      How does the racial project of whiteness in the Age of Obama compare and contrast with the project post-Brown, i.e., 1954-2008?

2)      How is post-racial whiteness able to remain a valuable asset in society while simultaneously conveying that "race doesn't matter" anymore?

3)      What conceptual, discursive, and representational mechanisms are deployed in law and society to perform this seeming contradiction?

Thesis:    Although much has been written about the 'transcendence of race' in the era of post-racialism we allegedly now inhabit, the depiction of the United States as a 'post-racial' society should be understood to be a particular kind of  'racial project' that seeks to defame and appropriate Blackness because such a project is necessary to promote economic hoarding in the service of enhancing white privilege that would otherwise be unseemly and counter-productive in hegemonic terms.

 

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